Another, and perhaps the latest, phase of the educational movement is the conviction that the school is a social institution, that its aims are social, and that its management, discipline, and method of instruction should be dominated by this idea. The mere contemplation of the proposition must be accompanied in the mind of every candid person by a sense of our shortcomings in this respect.
The two articles presented herewith seem to set forth this subject in such terms and to give it such illumination as to make them worthy of wide circulation, not only among the teachers, but the parents of the land.
Dr. Dewey's Pedagogical Creed shows how the concentrated agencies of the school should bring the child to share in the inherited resources of the race. It points out how discipline and method should be influenced to this end.
The article by Dr. Small is a trenchant exposition of the principle that education should direct its attention to sociology, and learn what the work of reality demands of the teacher. It is a fresher and better statement than has yet appeared of the old dictum that education should fit the child for his environment.
These two articles constitute an excellent text-book in pedagogy for advanced teachers, and, if conscientiously studied, our schools will come to be "not merely leaders of children, but makers of society."
- Brookline, Mass.
